Growing Native with Petey Mesquitey

We love our annual Christmas tree hunt and it’s been going on for a long time. I have 35 mm slides of hunts from 30 years ago…kids and dogs and Christmas trees.

Prior to this last sentence, by the way, I had written a several hundred-word diatribe about the species of introduced non native grasses we now find out in the wild. I changed my mind. Who needs a diatribe?

The dichotomous key for Abutilon sonorae in Arizona Flora says, “stems and petioles sparsely to copiously hirsute…”. I miss being copiously hirsute.

A true story about an injured great horned owl, a favorite chicken and a jacket.

Look for Amoruexia blooming in July and August on rocky slopes between 3,500 feet and 5,000 feet. Yeah, it’s going to be hot, but well worth the hike.

When I was a kid growing up in Kentucky a lot of folks called sweet potatoes yams.

Hoppy’s name is still the same after all these years and this is the story of a favorite dog that all three of our children were lucky enough to know and love. I suspect that Hoppy felt the same.

Another common name for Mentzelia is blazing star and I like that name a lot. It makes sense once you see the blazing yellow flowers opening in the late afternoon to be visited by native bees. Look at the photo of the flower and you’ll understand.

I find winter fat (it can be winterfat if you prefer) in alkaline fields or mesas near favorite limestone slopes. It’s always mixed in with grasses and other interesting shrubs like littleleaf sumac (Rhus microphylla)

Wonderful little thickets of seedlings growing along the banks of the creek may well be part of that riparian corridor many, many years from now. On our walk that day I saw the future and it looked good. The dogs, however, live in the present and we moved on.